Some Astounding Women

8 May 2011

Today’s gospel: Luke 24:13-35

                Mother’s day is not a church holiday. But, growing up in Illinois, almost Iowa (right on the border), it was a big church-going holiday. It was the day you pinned an orchid corsage on your mom, and your grandma, and you brought them to church, and then took them out to brunch. It was second only to Easter Sunday in attendance. I know, it’s hard to believe, here in Minnesota, where mother’s day is usually eclipsed by the Sunday of Fishing Opener.

                Because my expectations of the day were shaped by geography, when I first came to Minnesota I had a bit of a culture shock. My first year in Fergus Falls, I suggested to the Christian Education Committee that the Sunday School children could sing to their mothers in church on Mothers’ Day. “Why?” the chairperson responded, “Nobody’s going to be there.”

                They were as puzzled with me as I was with them. They were astonished that I could be so clueless.

                Which is seems to be the attitude that the disciples took, when they spoke to the stranger on the road to Emmaus. You are coming from Jerusalem, and yet you haven’t heard about what happened? What’s the matter with you?

                They seemed to have the same dismissive, incredulous attitude toward the women disciples. They reported that the women had ASTOUNDED them. The women went to the tomb, but the body wasn’t there, so they came back with this wild claim that they had seen angels, who told them that Jesus was alive. Naturally some men went to verify the claim, but they didn’t see any angels, or Jesus.

                Those astounding women. Talking crazy-talk!

So I’ve been thinking about astounding women this week.

I received an e-mail notice about a union gathering this week, and that made me thing of an astounding woman named Mother Jones.[1] It’s not just a magazine, you know. The magazine was named for an actual person, Mary Harris Jones. She was a mother, once. But her husband and four children all died of yellow fever, in Memphis, in 1867. Then she moved to Chicago where, four years later, she lost everything in the Great Chicago Fire.

But from the ashes of her grief, she was reborn. She got involved in the labor movement, and worked for the abolition of child labor. She organized the United Mine Workers. Coal miners and their families called her “the miner’s angel” She called the miners as “her boys.” This bereaved mother became the mother of multitudes, she became ‘Mother’ Jones. Her detractors called her “the most dangerous woman in America,” which is hard to believe. In her photo, she looks more like Granny Clampit than, well, anyone who could be called “dangerous.”

She perhaps is best known for, “Pray for the dead, and fight like hell for the living.” It is one of my favorite quotations, because it really sums up the Jesus message. Following Jesus is not about the next life, it’s about sharing with God in the creation of the Kingdom, where justice and righteousness reigns. Pray for the dead, fight like hell for the living. That’s one astounding woman.

Of course, being a UCC clergywoman, another astounding woman that comes to mind is Antoinette Brown Blackwell,[2] the first woman ordained by a major denomination in the United States, in 1853. When she nine years old, she joined the Congregational Church, and as a young woman began to feel that she was called to be a minister. So she went to Oberlin College, in Ohio, one of the few colleges that would admit women. She wasn’t allowed to earn a degree, but she was allowed to attend classes. After completing the coursework, she was called to be a pastor of a small church in South Butler, New York.

She didn’t stay in parish ministry long, but became part of the lecture circuit, preaching against slavery and for women’s suffrage. She married the brother of Elizabeth and Emily Blackwell the first women physicians in the United States, and she became the mother of five daughters. While raising her children she continued to write and publish articles on the cause of women’s rights.

Some astounding women are not famous at all. I have become familiar with one astounding woman through the writings of her son Ron Buford, a regular contributor to the Stillspeaking Daily Devotional, which you can have delivered to your e-mail box every day. Ron Buford is the guy who took the Gracie Allen quote, “Never place a period where God has placed a comma,” and built a promotional campaign around it.

[After Gracie’s death, her husband, George Burns, found a letter in her desk, that said, “Dear George, never place a period where God has placed a comma, Love, Gracie.”]

Ron has written several devotionals in which his mother “Queen Dorothy,” features prominently, and I want to share part of one with you. Ron wrote:

  As a kid, I remember coming home one weekday evening to the smell of fried chicken, fried corn, greens, cornbread, candied yams, homemade peach cobbler. Oh my! The best china and silver were stacked on the table. I asked Momma (whom we affectionately called Queen Dorothy behind her back):

  “Who’s coming?”

  “Just us,” she said.

  “Why the food and fine china?” I asked.

  And as only Queen Dorothy could say, “Because we are the most important people to ever sit at this table. . . . Now set the table, boy.”

  Wow! Momma knew Jesus’ sense of “now.”  Even  in those improving but still-troubling times of lynchings, church bombings, riots, marches, student protests,  assassinations of our political leaders, my Dad’s humiliations as a Black man, and our not being able to live or go just anywhere in town.

  That evening, we said grace over an extravagant meal in the spirit of Martin Luther King, who said, “I may not get there with you, but I’ve been to the mountaintop and Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory of the Coming of the Lord.” Past, present, and future sat at our table that night, and when I remember it, I taste all three . . . . seasoned with Momma’s lesson from Jesus: Love the people in your life . . . right now.[3]

I’m sure we can all remember some astounding women in our lives. Women who delivered good news to us. Women who worked tirelessly to create a little paradise on earth. Astounding women, through whom we have come to know the grace of God.

                Let us give thanks to God, for all these astounding women. Amen!

---

[1] http://www.americanswhotellthetruth.org/pgs/portraits/Mother_Jones.php

[2] Barbara Brown Zickmund’s article on ABB can be found at ucc.org

[3] Stillspeaking Daily Devotional for January 19, 2011. Read the whole devotional, and sign up for a daily e-mail at ucc.org.

Let's Talk About Justice

Introducing to his intent to co-sponsor an amendment to our state’s constitution, our state senator said to his interviewer: “We want Minnesota to have a conversation on this.”

                We at First Congregational had the conversation, when we were preparing to become an “Open and Affirming” church. In November, 2000, we approved our Statement of Openness and Affirmation which includes a pledge to support “relationships and families based on the Christian principles of love, justice, fidelity, trust, and mutual care.”

                We have celebrated the marriages of several couples whose unions are not recognized by the State of Minnesota, and in our eyes, as well as in our church records, these couples are married.  We look forward to the day when all our families can live without fear of discrimination.

                The introduction of an anti-marriage amendment (and I believe that is the only proper description of an amendment that would seek to shrink the definition of marriage) threatens our families. Once again, some of our families will be placed in the spotlight, and required to defend their right to be who they are. I can only imagine how dispiriting the prospect of being under such constant pressure.

                Again, remember our Statement of Openness and Affirmation:

We commit ourselves to oppose discrimination and prejudice in our attitudes, our personal relationships, and our congregation. We will seek justice and advocate redress of the wrongs committed against sexual minorities in our local community and in society at large.

                It is not enough to be a safe haven, a sanctuary for GLBT folk and their families. With all our might, and with faith that God will provide us “courage in the struggle for justice and peace,” we can participate in the transformation of our society. We can change the things that must be changed.

                Our state senator has called us out. He wants us to have a conversation about marriage. Let’s give him a conversation. Every day, every night, let’s give him a conversation. Let it be patient, and kind, and persistent. Let our hearts be aligned with Jesus’ heart.

Jesus is the one who stood between a woman who was about to be stoned to death, and the men who held the stones and had “the law” on their side. Jesus is the one who disregarded the boundaries that were supposed to separate him, a good Jewish rabbi, from “the unclean”—children and women and sinners and tax collectors. Jesus is the one who looked out at a hungry crowd and told his disciples, “You give them something to eat.”

“Wait” you might be thinking, “Should the church be involved in politics?”

I absolutely agree that the church shouldn’t be a tool of any king, party, or candidate. But living the faith has social, economic, and political consequences. Having decided to follow Jesus, we must be ready to accept the consequences. The consequences may include irritating our relatives who disagree with us. Some of us can avoid the consequences by being silent, others do not have that luxury.

But the rewards of discipleship are far greater than the consequences. Because when we follow, we receive the joy of being part of the body of Christ, transforming the world.

Minnesota is going to have a conversation about this. We must be ready to talk about justice.

Jesus Without Borders

Text: John 20:19-31

                 “Do not be afraid!” That is what we heard last week, when we read the Easter gospel, “do not be afraid!” Do not be afraid, the angel said to the women at the tomb, I know you are seeking Jesus, who was crucified, he is not here, he has been raised, as he said he would be. Now go, and tell his disciples.

                And as the women named Mary ran to tell the disciples, Jesus himself met them, and said to them, “Do not be afraid!”

                It is the gospel message again and again: the scripture resounds with the message: Fear Not! For I have redeemed you. I have called you by your name, you are mine. You shall not fear the terror of the night or the arrow that flies by day. Do not be anxious about what you will eat or drink or wear, or about where you will sleep. The Lord is your God. No fear! Do not fear, even death cannot harm you.

                On that Easter day, where were the twelve? Hiding. For Fear.

                Fear has a terrible effect upon the body, mind and soul. Fear triggers that fight or flight syndrome, and the disciples, apparently, chose flight. The brain chemistry of fear is pretty simple: in preparation for flight or fight, the body redirects its energy from the cerebral cortex, where we do our reasoning, to the brainstem, the center of the autonomic processes—to keep your heart beating and your lungs breathing.

                William Sloane Coffin once said: "As I see it, the primary religious task these days is to try to think straight....You can't think straight with a heart full of fear, for fear seeks safety, not truth. If your heart's a stone, you can't have decent thoughts--either about personal relations or about international ones. A heart full of love, on the other hand, has a limbering effect on the mind."

                A heart full of love has a limbering effect on the mind.

                A head full of fear has a hardening effect on the heart.

                Those twelve disciples, filled with fear, set a boundary around themselves and the rest of Jerusalem. They hid behind the walls of the house, hid behind locked doors, for fear. They didn’t get the message, that Jesus lives, because their hearts were hardened and their minds closed by fear.

                But the good news is, Jesus knows no boundaries. He never did in his lifetime. He was always crossing the boundaries. People complained that he didn’t respect the boundaries that they saw, between the righteous and sinners, between Jews and Samaritans, between men and women and children. In his resurrection, he certainly wasn’t going to let any wall keep him from his people. He came to save them from their fear. He came to send them out from their hiding places, with his message of forgiveness.

                In the United Church of Christ, we believe that God calls us into the church to accept the cost and joy of discipleship. One of the joys of discipleship is knowing that we are God’s beloved children forgiven, loved and free-- and so is everyone else. Among the costs of discipleship are the consequences of living that truth. It is not enough to pray for a world in which children live in peace and safety, and everyone has enough to eat. We are called to live the way we pray. Sometimes, that means putting our bodies between the victim and the perpetrator of violence. Sometimes that means ignoring the boundaries that are supposed to divide us. Sometimes that means literally giving people something to eat.

                Not everyone can do that. Not alone, anyway. That is why we have Justice and Witness Ministries in the United Church of Christ. Justice and Witness Ministries helps local congregations by keeping us aware of the poor, the hungry, those who are victimized around the world. This Sunday, Justice and Witness Ministries is calling “Immigrant Rights Sunday,” to draw our attention to the struggles of immigrant families and to the human rights crisis on our southern border.

                Even though we don’t live on that border, we can listen and learn, and advocate for justice. So I encourage you to listen and think with an open heart and mind. Do not give in to fear. So much of our political dialogue is frenzied with fear. Listen with love, listen with faith that banishes fear.

[Sermon preached May 1, 2011.]

Fearless!

Easter Sunday, 24 April 2011

Matthew 28:1-10

               

                This is the day that the Lord has made, we will rejoice and be glad in it. And a beautiful morning it is. New life blooms where hopes lie buried, in fact as well as figuratively. Those crocus bulbs we planted in the fall have bloomed and blown, and hyacinth are emerging, and daffodils and tulips soon to come. It is a festival of spring, new life emerging.

                Jesus went to Jerusalem to celebrate the spring festival with his disciples-- the spring festival of Passover, which is also a festival of new life. We were once slaves in Egypt, and God brought us out with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm, and led us across the Red Sea waters, and through the wilderness, and brought us across the flowing Jordan, to the promised land. The festival of Passover and the festival of the Resurrection, Easter, are both about the power of God to raise a people up, from death to life.

Jesus went to Jerusalem for the Passover, a celebration of freedom for a people who were, at the time, not so free as their oppressors would like them to imagine. Yes, they were in their promised land, the land that was given to their ancestors, but it wasn’t theirs anymore. It was an outpost of the Empire, and the people were, in a sense, exiles in their own land.

The good news of Jesus, according to Matthew, began with an angel’s announcement. “Do not be afraid.” Do not be afraid, Joseph, to take Mary as your wife, because the child she will bear will be Emmanuel, God-with-us.” Here we are in the final chapter of the gospel according to Matthew, and it ends as it began: Do not be afraid!

                Do not be afraid, the angel said to the women at the tomb. Do not be afraid when the earth quakes. Do not be afraid when the tomb is empty. Do not be afraid, because God is doing what God always does, making a way out of no way, bringing freedom to the oppressed, and courage to people who seem to have the least reason to be courageous.

                Look at the contrast between the women at the tomb, and the armed guards at the tomb. For fear of them, the guards shook and became like dead men. The angel’s message brought courage to women, and brought the brut squad to their knees. Beautiful!

                And then Jesus appeared to the women with the same message, a command, “Do not be afraid!” Fear is for Herod, who was frightened, and all of Jerusalem with him, when he heard of Jesus birth. Fear is for religious authorities who would have arrested Jesus sooner, but for their fear of the crowds who followed him. Fear is for the mighty. You, who follow Jesus, do not fear!

                Between the first and last chapters of Matthew’s gospel, between the beginning and the end of the story, Jesus said it over and over again. Do not be afraid for what you will eat or what you will wear. Do not be afraid when people mock you and slander you. Be not afraid!

                Jesus was repeating the lessons he learned as a student of the Hebrew scriptures: Do not fear, is what the Israelites learned in the wilderness, when God provided bread from heaven. Do not fear, Joseph learned when he was sold into slavery in Egypt. Do not fear, is what God said to David when he was hiding from Saul and to Elijah when he was hiding from Ahab. Do not fear the terror of the night, or the arrow that flies by day. Do not fear, for I have redeemed you. I have called you by your name, you are mine. The message circles round through the scriptures.

Do not be afraid. Unless you are Herod. If you are a Herod, be afraid, be very afraid. Do not be afraid, unless you are Pharaoh. If you are a Pharaoh, be afraid, be very afraid, for God has promised to come with justice for the oppressed.

Though you may feel like a slave, though you may feel like you are trying to make bricks without any straw, do not be afraid.

Though you may feel like an exile in your own land, do not be afraid.

Though you may feel you have no strength, and no voice, do not be afraid.

In Jesus, God has come to us as a slave, and an exile. In Jesus, God seemed to have been silenced and beaten. The power of God and the mercy of God and the hope of God’s people seemed to have died on the cross with Jesus. End of story.

But that was not the end of the story.

On that Easter morning, our story begins again, as it first began, “Do not be afraid. God is with us.” Emmanuel—God is with us, even to the end of the age.

This is the resurrection experience: the courage to live without fear.

Say it with me, Christ is risen. CHRIST IS RISEN. Christ is risen indeed. Alleluia! Amen.

The Last Week

Palm Sunday, 17 April 2011

                Palm Sunday is sometimes called the “little Easter.” This week we shout “Hosanna!” as if rehearsing for next week’s “Halleluiah!” But between that triumphal entry on one Sunday, and the resurrection the next, was a week in Jerusalem, Jesus’ last week. It was a descent into hell on earth for those who loved him, because they witnessed the betrayal and arrest, the torture and the execution of their beloved Jesus. He was someone’s son, and someone’s brother, and somebody’s friend, and somebody’s mentor.

                Most of us skip that part. We do, we skip the formal observances of Holy Week, because we are busy with other things and, frankly, because they are real downers. We are, culturally speaking, a people who prefer to accentuate the positive and eliminate the negative. Palm Sunday and Easter feel good. Maundy Thursday and Good Friday feel bad. So, we skip it. Advance to Go, collect $200, avoid paying rent on Boardwalk. We can do that.

                The liturgy of Holy Week may not fit our optimistic Hollywood USA version of life, but the liturgy of Holy Week is actually more like real life than perhaps we care to admit. And I believe that reenacting the whole week, in the liturgy of the church, year after year, can strengthen our spiritual muscles for the suffering that is a natural part of life.

                There is so much pain and suffering. I know, because sharing the sorrow is part of my job. In addition to celebrating family weddings and baptisms, I have the privilege of sharing in the intimacies of disappointment, sickness, and grief. I’m not complaining—it is a big, full life. That’s why I call it a privilege, it is. By virtue of office, I get to be part of the family in all the big moments of life: joys and sorrows. And that is my point. Life is not just made up of a series of peak experiences. There are valleys. Sometimes they seem like bottomless chasms, but they inevitably level out and begin to rise again. That’s life. That’s what ages of experience has taught us. And every religious system in the world has some way of coming to terms with suffering-- in Christianity, it is the incarnation of God.

                In our United Church of Christ statement of faith, one of the most meaningful lines for me is “In Jesus Christ, the man of Nazareth, God has come to us, and shared our common lot.” That means there is nothing we experience that God has not experienced. God knows from experience our ecstasies and our agonies. God knows what it’s like to be a child and pick wildflowers for mom, because Jesus did that. God knows what it’s like to hit your thumb with a mallet, because Jesus probably did that too. God knows what it’s like when people tell you that you are their savior, because God experienced that through Jesus. And God knows what it’s like to be run out of town, because Jesus experienced that too.

                God knows intimately what it is to be betrayed by someone you loved. God knows what’s it’s like to be in prison, because Jesus was there. God knows what it’s like to be beaten, because Jesus was there. And God knows death.

                Why did Jesus die? Because he was fully human. Because that is the way life is. There is a beginning and an ending. That’s the way all our stories go.

                Some stories seem to end way too soon. Like Jesus’ story.

                But for me, the life of Jesus sanctifies my suffering. Through the Jesus story, God takes my suffering and makes it holy. Through the Jesus story, the endurance of suffering becomes a spiritual virtue, that shapes our future and redeems our past.

                Through the life, suffering and death, and resurrection of Jesus I know that suffering is not all there is, that there is always a resurrection, a rising up.

                May the remembrance of Christ’s suffering strengthen us all in faith and hope, that our hearts may rise up in joy. Amen.

The Jesus Experience: I Was a Dead Man. And Now I'm Alive.

Fifth Sunday in Lent, April 10, 2011

John 11:1-45

                Kathleen Norris tells a story in Amazing Grace: A Vocabulary of Faith:

                [Here I read an excerpt from pp. 18-22. Too much to reprint here, but to summarize, it’s the true story about a small town cowboy whose life goes off the rails. Only when he found himself in a car with a murderer, did he realize that he was on the wrong road. He had only just come home to work out what to do next, when he told the author this story. “And that is salvation,” Norris wrote, “or at least the beginning of it.”]

….

                And in Have a Little Faith, Mitch Albom tells the story of Henry Covington, a man whose life journey took him from his childhood in Brooklyn to dealing drugs in Detroit, through reform and recovery, and then a new life, as pastor of a poor congregation which met in an old church building with a leaky roof. The congregation, despite its poverty, housed the homeless, fed the hungry, and tried to bring the dead drunk back to life.

                How many of us know the living dead? How many of us have grieved for brothers or sisters, friends or relations, who have become dead to the world, cut off from the land of the living by addiction to drugs, alcohol, gambling or the thrill of crime? People who were our childhood companions, whose life took a strange turn, who are unreachable, dead to us?

                For some folks like Henry Covington, the Jesus experience is like coming back from the dead. Returning from a hell on earth, given a second chance at life. It is possible that our brothers and sisters will rise again, in this lifetime.

                It isn’t easy to make that journey. A man doesn’t go from prison to the pastorate overnight. There are many steps from the grave to the arms of family. Many metaphorical stones to roll away.

                When brother Lazarus comes out, where will we be?

                I have heard recently from a local counselor who works with recovering addicts, some of whom have been released from prison on parole. Employment is a condition of parole. If a person cannot find a job, it is back to the tomb of prison. When unemployment is near 15%, who hires the parolee?

                Lazarus had his sisters, his sisters had their friends, who congregated outside the tomb. Who will be there for the next Lazarus?

                Let us contemplate what the Holy Spirit is saying to the church.

The Jesus Experience: Like Opening Your Eyes for the Very First Time

4^th Sunday in Lent, 3 April 2011

Text: John 9

                I can remember the first time the letters on a page became words. In first grade, Mrs. Landon’s class. The words were “jump, Jane.” Jump Jane, jump! Woo-hoo! I was reading! And after than moment, I understood that letters were not just letters, that they all made words and meant something. From the back seat of the car I read signs. “Gas. Food. Eat at Maid Rite.” And I remember thinking how odd it was that I couldn’t really remember what it was like not to read. I mean, just a few weeks earlier I had passed the same stores and gas stations and had no idea what I was missing!

                For some people, that is the Jesus experience. It is like opening your eyes for the first time, and seeing things you had never seen before: the earth, the sky, your mother’s face. A whole new world appears before you. It is wonderful! And then, things get complicated.

                In yesterday’s daily devotional, Tony Robinson commented on how, to hear some people tell it, the Jesus experience changes life only for the better. To hear some people tell it, the Jesus experience comes with tangible benefits: “Jesus came into my life and now our business is great, my husband and I are super in love, and my son is getting straight A’s.”

                If that’s your story, good for you. But meeting Jesus doesn’t always mean that life gets materially better. Sometimes, Jesus comes into our lives uninvited, and brings chaos. As in today’s gospel story.

                The blind man had his place in the community. He used to sit and beg. His neighbors pitied him, his parents looked after him, did best they could. But then the disciples of Jesus came by, and drew Jesus’ attention to the man. Though the blind beggar never asked anything of Jesus, Jesus muddied the man’s face and then told him to go and wash; and he did, and then he could see. It must have been amazing! What joy! What a wonder! But, not for long.

                Forced to tell his story over and over again, hauled from pillar to post as people argued over him, he was accused of being a fraud. Denied by neighbors, barely acknowledged by his parents, and then cast out of his congregation-- he was hardly a success story.

                And Jesus is mostly absent from this story. Jesus is the cameo appearance, at the beginning and the end. In the middle, the man formerly known as the blind beggar is on his own.

                Isn’t that the case for most of us? Moments of enlightenment come and go, and in between, we struggle to live this new life. We want others to understand, but as hard as we try, some people just don’t get it. They don’t see what we see.

Those in authority are particularly threatened by a sighted population. As long as we blindly accept our given place in the world, as the beggar, as the baby, as the drone or the worker, then all is peaceful. Not good maybe, but calm. But when we are given the sight to see that the powerful of this world stand on our backs, and count on us to remain blind to our own enslavement, then the very foundations of the world begin to shake. If we dare to rise up to claim our freedom, we become the outcast.

                And that is where Jesus finds us. Jesus seeks us out and searches for us. We know Jesus’ story: we know that Jesus is no stranger to abandonment, betrayal, and denial. What we see at the end is the promise of God, given through the prophet Isaiah:

Can a woman forget her nursing child, or show no compassion for the child of her womb? Even these may forget, yet I will not forget you. (49:15)

The Jesus experience. Once our eyes are opened, we will never not see again. That may not make us popular, but, we are promised, we will never be alone. We are part of a family now that reaches back into history and forward to the reign of God. Thanks be to God. Amen.